c Queries to the correspondents
of "N. & Q." when a note caught my attention relating to Edmund Spenser
(in the Number dated March 26.). The Mr. F. F. Spenser mentioned therein
was related to me, being my late father's half-brother. I regret to say
that he died very suddenly at Manchester, Nov. 2, 1852. During his
lifetime, he took much pains to clear up the doubts about the locality
of the poet's retirement, and his relatives in the North; and has made
out a very clear case, I imagine. On a visit to Yorkshire in 1851, I
spent a few days with him, and took occasion to urge the necessity of
arranging the mass of information he had accumulated on the subject;
which I have no doubt he would have done, had not his sudden death
occurred to prevent it. These facts may be of some interest to
biographers of the poet, and with this object I have ventured to trouble
you with this communication.

J. B. SPENCER.

11. Montpellier Road, Blackheath.

* * * * *

THROWING OLD SHOES FOR LUCK.

(Vol. ii., p. 196.; Vol. v., p. 413.; Vol. vii., pp. 193. 288.)

I do not know whether you will permit me to occupy a small portion of
your valuable space in an attempt to suggest an origin of the custom of
throwing an old shoe after a newly married bride.

Your correspondents assume that the old shoe was thrown after the bride
_for luck_, and for luck only. I doubt whether it was so in its origin.

Among barbarous nations, all transfers of property, all assertions and
relinquishments of rights of dominion, were marked by some external
ceremony or rite; by which, in the absence of written documents, the
memory of the vulgar might be impressed. When, among Scandinavian
nations, land was bought or sold, a turf was delivered by the trader to
the purchaser: and among the Jews, and probably among other oriental
nations, a shoe answered the same purpose.

In Psalm lx., beginning with "O God, thou hast cast me off," there
occurs the phrase, "Moab is my washpot, over Edom have I cast out my
shoe." Immediately after it occurs the exclamation, "O God! who has cast
us off!" A similar passage occurs in Psalm cix.

By this passage I understand the Psalmist to mean, that God would
thoroughly cast off Edom, and cease to aid him in war or peace. This
interpretation is consistent with the whole tenor of the Psalm.

The receiving of a shoe was an evidence and symbol of asserting or
accepting dominion or ownership; the gi